


Old Gods

by Kantayra



Category: Smallville
Genre: Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-23
Updated: 2010-05-23
Packaged: 2017-10-19 01:43:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kantayra/pseuds/Kantayra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The two of them had overcome the destruction of worlds and the creation of new universes. They'd known love, hate, birth, and death. And, in the end, the only constant amid it all was each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Gods

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is what happens when I read [articles about new universes forming inside black holes](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100409-black-holes-alternate-universe-multiverse-einstein-wormholes/), while at the same time people on my flist post about SV and make me all nostalgic for Clex.

The last time Lex had seen Clark, they’d been fighting for supremacy of the galaxy: Lex at the helm of the Vlaxian Imperial Fleet and Clark the central hope of the Rebel Alliance. Clark had won that battle, ripped Lex’s ship apart until it was nothing but scrap, and left Lex buried alive on a deserted asteroid in the middle of the Psamit Belt. It wasn’t as harsh a punishment as it sounded, however, since by that point they both very well knew that the other was immortal in every sense of the word, and that their battle could only be postponed, never ended.

It had taken Lex years – Decades? Centuries? – to slowly dig his way from the asteroid’s core to the surface. And then years, decades, centuries more before an unmanned probe from the Harnath System landed on the asteroid’s surface in search of mining prospects. Lex had hijacked the probe, rooted out the alien workings of its propulsion systems, and finally gotten himself back to civilization. By that time, his last epic battle with Clark was nothing but a pseudo-mythological footnote in the intergalactic history books.

As a result, when Lex attended the diplomatic summit on Cyrallia IX as chief ambassador for the Qol’nath delegation and spotted Clark in the crowds outside the capital, the last thing he expected was the wide grin or the enthusiastic embrace Clark bestowed upon him.

“ _Lex_ ,” Clark whispered raggedly into his ear.

“Clark,” Lex agreed, surprised to find himself returning the sentiment still, even after all they’d been through.

“Where in the universe have you been?” Clark said brightly, as if they were long-lost friends rather than age-old enemies. And, to tell the truth, Lex thought that they were probably both. “I stopped by Psamit a couple centuries back, but you were long gone.”

Lex shrugged and pulled back. “Here and there,” he answered neutrally.

“Well, whatever you’re doing, drop it. We haven’t seen each other in so long that I’d almost forgotten what you looked like again.” Clark’s gaze ran all over Lex, correcting a thousand details that the ages had smoothed from his memory. In truth, Lex didn’t think he’d aged since they’d first met, although he couldn’t prove it because even he couldn’t remember back that far.

“Okay.”

The delegates with Lex were shocked and voiced their opinion of his decision. Or at least they would’ve if they’d _had_ voices. Instead, they had pincers, which were clicking incessantly. Lex favored them with a final, fond smile. He’d enjoyed his time among the Qol’nath. They worshipped treachery and had elevated Lex to their own national deity after he’d survived his first one-hundred assassination attempts. However, there was always another planet, another race, another conquest – not just another _one_ , but another _million billion_. The universe was endless, vast, and repetitive. The only things that were unique and consistent were himself and Clark.

One of the Qol’nath shot Lex in the back as he turned to leave with Clark. Lex felt the laser sear through his flesh, white and blinding, and then his flesh pulled back, re-grew, and stitched itself together in the blink of an eye. Lex hoped the Qol’nath who shot him got a promotion out of it. It was a very good assassination attempt.

“What was that about?” Clark asked Lex, completely unperturbed, offering his hand to Lex.

Lex slid his fingers into Clark’s. “Just some final succession business.”

“Ah.” Clark’s hand closed around his, and they walked off into the crowds. “Do you still eat?”

“Sometimes,” Lex agreed. “For the novelty of it.”

“Let’s find someplace to eat, then,” Clark suggested.

They drew looks as they walked through the marketplace. Lex was used to those looks by now. He got them enough on his own, but with another seemingly of the same race that he was? Clark could undoubtedly hear the words in their whispers, but Lex didn’t need super-hearing to know what they were saying. Hidden in myths and legends and rumors, he and Clark were always there: the Old Gods, timeless and immortal and forever clashing.

They ended up at the most lavish establishment in the spaceport. The place cleared out entirely at the sight of the two of them, together, hands clasped. Lex supposed worlds had met their ends for things far less.

The spaceport was ideal because it was entirely automated and catered to cuisines throughout the galaxy. Lex recommended the Lycean to Clark, who confessed to not having eaten in a millennium or so.

“Not that I can remember what the food on my homeworld was like,” Lex explained, “but Lycean food appeals to my palate, in general.”

“That should be fine, then,” Clark agreed. He and Lex both dimly recalled that they didn’t originate on the same planet, but neither of them could remember the details, and it seemed they had known each other from almost the beginning. In any case, their taste in food was similar.

The food materialized on the table between them, and they ate slowly, thinking of what to say to each other after all this time.

“What did you do after Psamit?” Lex finally asked, biting into a ring of breaded dough that crunched and released a rich, spicy flavor into his mouth. Of course, Lex had tasted it all before and would taste it all again, countless times in countless different cuisines.

“It took a few generations to erase the idea of your empire,” Clark explained. “After that was finally put to rest, I flew around the galaxy for some time, searching for inhabited planets with stars about to go nova.”

“Hmm,” Lex agreed.

“How’d you get off that asteroid?” Clark asked curiously.

“Eventually, a probe landed.” Lex looked up at Clark and watched him lick the sweet syrup of his dessert from his fingertips. “Any more marriages? Children?”

One of the things that never ceased to amuse Lex was how startled different alien races were when they first discovered that their neighbors around the galaxy held essentially the same form they did. He and Clark, sowing roots on this world and that before moving on, accounted for a vast majority of ‘inexplicable’ genetic similarity in the universe, to date.

“A few. I had three sons about a millennium back. One of them lived over three-hundred years on a planet where old age was thirteen.”

Lex rested a hand over Clark’s at that. They’d each had many children, both together and with others, over the years. Some lived exceptionally long lives, but none had been immortal. It was a distant, wistful pain to them now, but their children still stirred some instinctive responsive inside Lex. Given the way Clark squeezed Lex’s hand back, Lex knew that Clark shared the feeling with him.

“You?” Clark countered. “I suppose I should have asked before I pulled you away.”

“No, not at the moment.”

“I suppose you were here for the summit meeting,” Clark concluded.

“Of course. The alliance was the first step toward building a foundation force at the center of this galaxy.”

“An expansionist one, I presume.”

Lex fixed Clark with a level look. “I like order.”

“You do know that the alliance you were trying to form involved two species known for eradicating entire worlds?” Clark pointed out.

“Those worlds weren’t orderly,” Lex shot back.

“They contained billions of lives.”

“Lives are insignificant. How many universes have we seen destroyed and reborn? How many galaxies, planets, people? Lives flicker only for a second and blink out of existence. Only we remain.”

“That’s why it’s so important that those lives burn as long as they can, Lex,” Clark argued. “They’ll never get to experience everything we have, so every moment they get is precious.”

“Every moment they get is tortuous if they’re spent in periods of chaos and destruction,” Lex countered and reached out to catch a dribble of the sticky syrup at the edge of Clark’s lips. “I offer them a life of quality, not quantity.”

Clark sighed.

Lex licked his finger clean and tasted the lingering, distantly familiar taste of Clark on it.

“Do you ever wonder how we ended up like this?” Clark finally asked. “How did it ever turn out that only the two of us live forever?”

Lex frowned, but after billions or maybe trillions of years, no memory remained. “We’re different,” was all he could offer. “In some ways, we must always have been different.”

“At least there are two of us.”

“That makes it better?” Lex cocked an eyebrow pointedly. Thousands of things were spoken between them in that moment: years of friendship, love, bitter rivalry, death and destruction, and then everything returning full-circle once more.

“Doesn’t it?” Clark asked.

Lex considered this. It would be so much easier to achieve his goals, rule the universe with an iron fist of justice, if Clark were gone. Some millennia, Lex didn’t even think of Clark at all. But, in long run, as the cosmos was sucked through one black hole and reborn on the other end, it was reassuring that there was one other constant Lex could depend on.

Lex took a sip of the savory-scented liquid in the cup before him. “So I assume you were here to stop my alliance.” It wasn’t a question.

Clark laughed. “I should have known it was you.”

“You really should have,” Lex agreed.

“So, what do you want to do now?” Clark set down his spined eating utensil and gave Lex a very open, very curious look.

Lex avoided that gaze for a few moments. Across the spaceport, a group of traders from some species Lex didn’t recognize was gawking at their luncheon in the now-deserted restaurant. “On Mrmbk V,” Lex said instead, “we’re said to be the creators of the cosmos.”

“And in the Lania System, we were born from the creator god’s twin tears, when he created void and substance,” Clark countered.

“All living beings are said to be our children.”

“We are chaos and order. Or order and chaos, depending on which sect you ask.”

“We’re not gods, Clark.”

“No,” Clark agreed, “but we’re certainly not mortals.”

Lex smiled to himself. “Do you want to begin it all again, then?” he offered. “Come together as friends – lovers, for as long as we can handle it. Another child…”

“For all we know,” Clark pointed out, “the next one could be like we are.” His eyes were very earnest, although after all this time he must know as well as Lex did that the odds were practically non-existent.

“It won’t last, of course,” Lex added. “We are too diametrically opposed for that.”

“We’ll fight and hate each other and destroy each other,” Clark agreed.

Lex took a final sip. “And then it will begin all over again.”

“That’s how the cosmos works.”

“And we are but mere fixtures in the cosmos,” Lex agreed.

“Are you tired of it?” A part of Clark sounded almost wounded at the thought.

Lex shook his head, almost imperceptibly. “You remember the time we made love while that black hole consumed the universe?”

“And we really thought that was the end of everything,” Clark smiled wistfully at their naïveté. No matter how complete the destruction, there would always be light once more, bringing Clark gasping back into existence, and there would always be matter, regenerating itself again until Lex was by his side. So long as those two fundamental concepts persisted, the two of them would always form anew.

“We’re always like that, to me,” Lex concluded. “Only with you do I gain anything or lose anything.”

Clark rose to his feet and pulled Lex up beside him. “Gain and lose _everything_ ,” he corrected.

“Mmm,” Lex leaned in close and breathed in the scent of Clark, primordial and locked somewhere so deep within Lex that it seemed to predate the universe itself. It certainly predated _this_ universe, which they were currently occupying. “So no,” he finally said lazily, pulling back to press his forehead against Clark’s, “I’m not tired of it at all.”

“You’ll come with me, then?” Clark asked. “Spend as many millennia together as we can stand?”

“I suppose I really should get you back for Psamit,” Lex said, more amused at his captivity than anything else.

“The time before that, you threw me into a white dwarf,” Clark reminded him.

“Did I? It was so long ago…”

“Everything was so long ago. That’s why we need to live it all again.” Clark took hold of Lex’s hand and raised it to his lips.

“In the end, I wonder if we’ve ever really changed that much.”

“We must have,” Clark concluded. “At some point, we must have thought we were like everyone else, that we would live and die.”

“I wonder if we thought differently then, if we felt differently.”

“I can’t imagine we ever felt _nothing_ for each other. That’s the only thing I’ve never felt for you.”

Lex let out a long, shaky breath. “On Eyren, we are said to be cosmic mates, married for all time.”

“We’ve certainly been married _enough_ times,” Clark agreed.

“The only peace in the universe is said to be found in our love, and war is said to come every time we divorce.”

“I heard it the same way on Kartak Prime. Except there it was the creation and destruction of the universe.”

“It’s not true, of course.”

“We’re just men, in the end.”

Lex smiled lazily at Clark. “Let’s create new universes together.”

“So long as we don’t destroy the old ones.”

It was an agreement and a disagreement all at once, and as their mouths met, they almost could believe that they were gods, and the fundamental substance of existence formed between the joining of their lips.

Around them, civilians ducked their heads down (if they had them) and pretended not to see. Some made religious gestures of protection, while others contacted governments and rulers the galaxy over to begin making preparations.

In the end, it was all pointless and a little bit unfair. At the moment, Clark and Lex were wrapped up in the purity of their love, which would one day inevitably lead again to the purity of their hate. Perhaps the change would be quick and sharp this time. But, more often than not, it was slow and long, embittered and embroiled. None of the beings alive today would experience it, nor their children, nor their children’s children. But Clark and Lex would come to an end at long last, as all things did, and then past that end, too, there would be a new beginning.

For now, however, chaos and order broke apart with a shared, secretive smile.

“In the end,” Lex concluded, “I don’t think we’ve changed at all.”

“On Vurell III,” Clark countered, “we’re said to be the personification of love and hate.”

“And which of us is which?”

“Both, together,” Clark clarified. “Sometimes we’re love, and sometimes we’re hate. The only constant in either concept is that they’re always changing, never the same.”

“I should have known you’d find some way to fundamentally disagree with me, yet agree at the same time.”

“Yes,” Clark agreed, leading him off into a new era together and apart, “you should have.”


End file.
